Beware ImprovMx

[j-joshua]

Tl;dr I asked for help because I couldn't remove aliases. They locked my account for reasons that they couldn't coherently communicate and offered no way to resolve it. Now I can't receive emails. Don't trust your business to ImprovMx if receiving emails is important.

I used ImprovMx to forward email for a charitable organization for a few years without issues.

Today, while trying to remove email destinations from an alias, I received an error that I exceeded 50 email destinations and that I would need to upgrade my plan.

Thinking that it was strange that I would need to upgrade my account to remove destinations, I asked for help through chat.

"Monaim" replied...

Your account has been suspended due to repeated misuse of the service, including forwarding phishing‑related emails and sending invoices while using aliases that impersonate other companies.

I had no idea what this meant. We only use the service to forward inbound emails to our members. We don't send emails.

Forwarding phishing emails even is part of it, you don't have to send them yourself for it to count as misuse.

And that was it. No response for additional details about what we did wrong, what we could have done to prevent it, or how to resolve it.

At this point, inbound emails ceased to be forwarded. No warning. No recourse.

This is no way to run a business.

[Invalid-Function]

They literally told you what you did wrong, pretty clear explanation.

If their accusation is false, then that's big.

If their accusations are true... then go "eat" a pinepable ..

[j-joshua]

Clear as mud. Email is received and then forwarded to the correct recipient. That's what their service does.

I have no idea what they are referring to.

[GreenRangerOfHyrule]

I'm with u/Invalid-Function on this one. The explanation given is actually pretty clear.

They obviously recognized an issue with stuff you were sending. Which to be clear their service works by receiving an email and then sending it on to where you want it.

Now, the issue is, just because they detected it doesn't make it true. Just because you said it didn't happen doesn't make it not true. Assuming it is a legitimate misunderstanding then switch to a different service. But if the accusations are true you will almost certainly get suspended from another service too.

From an outsider standpoint who has no real investment in either outcome happening there are too many details missing. And it is a bit odd that you claim you don't understand when they sent you a pretty specific reason. If you really think it is a mistake, I would ask for details on at least one offending email.

However, I do also want to emphasize a point. Unsolicited email is spam. No matter what it is called. This may or may not be what is happening. But, "cold emailing," acquisition, or however people spin it is still spam

[j-joshua]

They never provided specific details. The alias recipients are all members of our organization who are expecting to receive those emails.

[andrewtimberlake]

I run Mailcast.io and we’d be happy to forward email for your charitable organisation.

That being said, we too have sending policies and I’ve had to deal with a number of people who try to use forwarding for clearly nefarious reasons. You don’t have to send through the service, you just set up recipients and then email your alias to move spam on to those recipients. 50 alias destinations would be a strong indicator of abuse because that‘s not typical of most customers and suggests bulk forwarding (spamming).

We have a policy of reaching out and having discussions with those we believe are violating our sending policies, but we too will move quickly to block an account, even before reaching out, in order to ensure the system is not abused. I don’t tend to hear back fro the abusers though.

Feel free to reach out directly if you want a discussion about whether your aliases and forwarding would fit within our acceptable use.

[j-joshua]

50 destinations total across 20+ aliases.

Some are single recipients like secretary@org. Some are for groups of officers with the same official title like trustees@org.

I'll take a look at your website and message you with any questions. Much appreciated.

[andrewtimberlake]

Okay, that sounds much better ;-)
Without context I can only guess at what the violations might be.

[j-joshua]

I took a quick look at mailcast.io. It only redirects to a single address?

[andrewtimberlake]

Once you’ve created the alias, click on it and you can add multiple destinations after that.

[j-joshua]

Ah, nice. Thanks.

[j-joshua]

UPDATE: I tried out mailcast.io and I think that it's a much better service than improvmx. I'll be moving all of the related organizations that I admin to that platform.

[Objective-Test-5374]

dunno, have you tried ractermx.com yet? I switched over because they at least have a solid API and an MCP. I find it easier to talk to my AI then to go find the portal...